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The desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.

William James

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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Gains
Wealth
Lose
Breeders
Loses
Cowardice
Desire
Chief
Fear
Chiefs
Corruption
Gain

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To know an object is to lead to it through a context which the world provides
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The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous.
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There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.
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If you want to change your life, do it flamboyantly and start immediately.
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Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.
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No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.
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To kill time is not murder, it's suicide.
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You may not get everything you dream about, but you will never get anything you don't dream about.
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Religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge.
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Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens outthe widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread', as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage.
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Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith.
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All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride.
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The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
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All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.
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If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.
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To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
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Time itself comes in drops.
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The simplest rudiment of mystical experience would seem to be that deepened sense of the significance of a maxim or formula which occasionally sweeps over one.
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Psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice at its back.
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A thing is important if anyone think it important.
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